Wayne gets $10,000 for an item that has been kept running with donations from users...

Doesn't seem right to me... or am I missing something?

Well, it's labeled 'Donation' and there is this cute kitty (?) pic... So basically you don't 'pay' him to keep the server running, but give him money because he does. Sounds a bit strange, but the money you give him hasn't really something to do with the site (or server). Guess that's what BuZz meant too.

I balked at the 10k figure. Amiga.org is useful for me, as I live in the US currently and a lot of their members are based in the US too. If Amiga.org was to shutdown, I think the best solution would be for Wayne to transfer the domain over to another party... EAB or AmigaKit even, and then repoint the domain at another site, EAB, AmigaKit, or AmigaWorld.

While I could live with the site itself going down (I browse both EAB and Amiga.org ) I'd hate to see the domain get hijacked or worse get snapped up by the likes of Amiga Inc or Doomy

The real value of a community site is not its content, but its database of members.

Youtube for example didn't sell for a huge sum of money because of the videos it had. It large membership and userbase meant a large target audience for future ad campaigns and revenue streams.

A.org just doesn't have a commercial value in my view. It is purely a community entity for a very small non profit market. Without its community it is nothing. There are so many other forums and portals for the Amiga that if A.org went offline I don't think it would matter.

Well other than its usefulness as a trollsink!

Wayne seems to be looking for some kind of compensation and a pat on the back for the time he devoted to running the site. This should not be why people run community sites. It should be for the passion of its subject. If you don't have that thn close down, cut your loses and move on to other things. Possibly offering to merge the site and its content/membership with another similar community site. He shouldn't be trying to blackmail his community into paying off his debts. If he couldn't afford to run the site and it has been costing him more than he could afford then he should clearly have said so to his community as they probably would have rallied round and funded it for him.